Nordic skiers and forest managers took steps Friday toward lessening the impacts of a logging operation on a popular winter recreation area on the top of the Grand Mesa. Officials with the Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forest sat down with representatives from the Grand Mesa Nordic Council for two hours and came away […]
spruce beetle
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News, Outdoors
A recent timber sale is about to send 250 giant logging trucks through a pristine Grand Mesa Nordic skiing area
High atop the Grand Mesa in Western Colorado, where elevation and a rippling topography come together to create some of the state’s prime early-season cross-country ski terrain, logging is about to collide with recreation. A planned timber sale near the Grand Mesa Nordic Council’s Skyway trail system will allow logging trucks to rumble over a […]
Posted inClimate, Environment, News, Wildfire
Opinion: Climate change is making Rocky Mountain forests more flammable now than at any time in the past 2,000 years
By Philip Higuera, The University of Montana; Bryan Shuman, University of Wyoming; and Kyra Wolf, The University of Montana The exceptional drought in the U.S. West has people across the region on edge after the record-setting fires of 2020. Last year, Colorado alone saw its three largest fires in recorded state history, one burning late […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News, Newsletters, The Outsider
The slow fade of Colorado’s mountain pine beetle is triggering a massive shift in the timber industry
Colorado’s forests have been waging a losing battle against tree-killing beetles for more than 15 years. Now, after marching across the state and killing millions of acres of pine forest, the burrowing, fungus-spreading mountain pine beetles are slowly losing steam. While other beetles have thrived in Colorado’s drought-ravaged mountains, the mountain pine beetles have reigned […]